Puffs

Puffs

Dreams . . .

Do you dream ? ? ? or maybe better asked: how often do you dream?

I don’t think I dream every night, but I do have dreams every so often.

At least over the years, I’ve been told by Nancy and by many others they dream often. However, last week I had a dream I thought just didn’t make any sense. It went something like this: I was working in the office of “The Lawrence Locomotive” and as I was working, I heard an alarm clock go off. I searched for it, found it and shut it off. I quickly heard another, and then several, all going off at the same time. I looked for them (because they were not readily obvious) and I shut them off.

I finally got them shut off and sat back down in my chair when I suddenly felt someone hitting me on my back.

I turned to look and found it was Nancy wanting me to shut off my alarm clock.

You have to realize my alarm clock is just a couple of feet away from my pillow. This was not the first time Nancy woke me up because the alarm clock was going off and I did not hear it, but it was one of very few times that the alarm clock fit into a dream I was having.

Maybe I need a dream interpreter to let me know what it all means.

A O

With the change in the leadership of our U. S. government, much has been made in the national media about the pardons granted by the ‘outgoing’ and the ‘incoming’ presidents. I don’t agree with all of the pardons by either president, but I admit I don’t understand all the reasons behind them as well.

A lot has been, and will be, written about the pardons. In general terms, I agree with the concept of granting pardons, but can’t accept all that have been made. Seems every four years, the number of pardons gets larger and larger.

At least that was what I believed until a read a little news items over the weekend that involved some pardons from 1977.

It seems that in 1977, President Jimmy Carter granted unconditional pardons to hundreds of thousands of men who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War. It is estimated that some 100,000 young Americans went abroad in the 1960s and 1970s to avoid the possibility of serving in the Vietnam War. Ninety percent went to Canada.

Some 48 years ago . . . maybe that is when I first got the idea that pardons were not all a good thing in all cases, and . . . when I got the idea that President Carter may have been the worse president in the U. S. history.

A O

There will be numerous changes with the new government in the near future and we’ll probably touch on them in the future. However, one of the more interesting one is an on-going process that will most likely take some time to complete, indeed if it ever changes completely.

More than 60 years ago, 1964, to be exact, the Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress. Demeaning and immoral race and sex-based preferences in the operation of out general day-by-day lives, were to be eliminating from our lives. In large part, the act has helped change our behavior, but as human nature goes, it is an ‘on-going’ situation.

Have you noticed however, how imaginative we humans are when it comes to “Human Rights?”

For the past four years, what is called “DEI” (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) has been used to force violations of Civil Rights in the guise of protecting such rights.

In years past the Civil Rights Act was intended to protect certain groups of people, ‘women’, or people of color’ for example. However, with DEI, that didn’t matter. The only thing that matters under DEI is what those people who make the decision think it includes. Even if you are being considered for a job, for example, your race, gender or experience does not matter. What is important is how you meet whatever the person in control thinks of you passing his own understanding of what DEI is

I don’t even know if there is a federal law trying to correct a situation that this DEI is trying to correct. The problem, to me, is that many of the people trying to implement DEI are in conflict with the Civil Rights Act, trying to do the same thing for 60 plus years. The concept behind DEI may not be all bad, but the way it is forced upon us certainly not all correct, either.

A O

Spam . . . not the food, the phone calls. Seems like there have been a lot of them after the holidays. There are also a number of similar items in the mail.

I don’t know if one item I got in the mail last week falls under the designation of “spam” but it read just like phone calls I remember receiving over the years. Only this time, the letter incorporated the village of Lawrence in its appeal for funds.

As such, I replied to the village (city) of Lawrence as follows:

Dear Sir-Madam:

I can’t tell you how happy I was today upon receiving my daily portion of mail from the U. S. Postal Service. Among the tons . . . err pounds . . . err maybe less than that . . . anyway, among the three pieces of mail I received today one did not have a return address on it, but I knew it was important because up where the return address should have been printed was a note that said: “Lawrence City Council Members need to hear from you!” 

Now, that made me wonder just what the City Council needed to hear from me about. I thought we have a Village Board of Directors rather than a City Council . . . but I don’t usually worry about the small stuff, so I quickly opened to see just what they needed to hear from me about.

I was quickly informed of the fact that in many towns and cities, those parts of the cities that did not keep their properties up and allowed trash to accumulate were the area where crime lives. In essence I think they wanted me to donate money to the National Police Association and fill out the form to let the National Police Association know that I would support an increased police presence in our areas of town that have trash accumulating. (Because I certainly don’t want crime to rise in Lawrence.)

It didn’t say, but I assume any donation I might make would quickly make its way back to the Village of Lawrence Police Dept.

The letter told me that the Lawrence City Council approves our police budget and gives the police their marching orders. As such, I have to confess that I am in a serious cash flow situation right now, As such, whenever I am able to correct this cash shortage situation, I’ll be sure to forward a monetary gift to the Lawrence Police Dept.

However, I am a little bit confused, you want me to send the letter to Stafford, Texas. The only hint as to where the letter came from was in the bulk mailing permit and it said Fredericksburg, VA (I assume that is Virginia. I never did like the Postal Service change to those two letter designation for states.)

Anyway, would you please respond to me with the amount of money that is forwarded to our Lawrence Police Dept.? I could check around and see if we can get someone to match it.

Sincerely,

Allen Ostdiek

A O